The New Yorker has a piece on the infamous battle between Rudy Giuliani and Chris Ofili over the artist’s The Holy Virgin Mary, which the then-mayor sought to have removed from a show at the New Museum, and which has now been acquired by MoMA. “When we acquired the work and put it in front of our committee, it looked like it had descended from Heaven,” MoMA curator Laura Hoptman says.
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Jose Berardo
Collector’s Birthdate: b. 1944
Berardo is a Portugese businessman who has amassed a fortune worth over $1 billion from, gold mining in South Africa. He is also an active stock trader. Recently, he opened up his extensive art collection to the public, displaying works by artists like Picasso, Dali and Miro at the newly opened Museu Berardo in the Centro Cultural de Belem in Lisbon.
Though auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s have pursued his collection, valued at more than $400 million, he has never sold a work of art. Other artists included in his extensive collection of over 1,000 works include Pop Art by the likes of Warhol and Lichtenstein, Realist pieces by Bacon and Balthus as well as several works by Minimalist artists. In 2007, he tried to purchase the futbol club S.L. Benfica.
